Bharti Airtel rolls out new plan for business clients

NEW DELHI: Bharti Airtel has rolled out " myPlan for Business" for corporate customers in India, taking a cue from the success of the scheme with retail consumers, as India’s No. 1 telecom company strives to increase its average revenue from the higher-paying post-paid user base.

The plan allows users to choose a monthly bill amount for a package of services such as voice, data and text and tweak their consumption according to need — for instance, increase data usage while reducing text messages.

While the scheme has been available for enterprises for the past four weeks, the company plans to aggressively push it with a full-fledged marketing strategy that includes targeted digital and channel-level campaigns, Manish Prakash, director, Airtel Business, told ET.

According to Airtel’s research and a detailed customer study conducted by the company, a significant portion of the benefits of any post-paid plan was not used by corporate customers.

"myPlan for Business was conceptualised to help reduce this wastage and enable customers to make the most of their bill plan benefits. The utilisation is now in their hand. They can balance the whole portfolio of data, ISD, roaming et al the way they use it," Prakash said.

Banking, IT/ITeS, manufacturing and media are some of the sectors that have shown interest in myPlan for business.

Prakash said the scheme would help Bharti Airtel to enhance post-paid average revenue per user (ARPU). Airtel’s blended ARPU increased to Rs 202 in the last quarter from Rs 196 in the quarter ended March 31. Airtel plans to add 4G services in myPlan for Business, considering that the post-paid customer base is more inclined towards using data services.

Idea Cellular, India’s third-largest telecom company, and Aircel also offer services similar to myPlan to postpaid retail customers.

Prakash said Bharti Airtel has been able to convert a large part of its new corporate customers to myPlan.

"By end of October this year, we would be acquiring 100 per cent new corporate customers on myPlan. This will bring disruption in the market against competition," Prakash said.